The Rope in the Water: A Pilgrimage to India

Christine Hughes is A/Manager, Developmental Services Branch, Ontario
Ministry of Community, Family and Children’s Services.

The Rope in the Water is award-winning journalist Sylvia Fraser’s
account of her three-month adventure in India. With a reporter’s keen
eye and questioning mind, she brings India alive as she vividly
describes her 12,000-kilometre trek across deserts, into jungles, and up
mountains, from one end of the country to the other, and her visits to
numerous sacred sites and temples.

The book’s title comes from her near-drowning experience. While
swimming off Kovalam Beach in the Arabian Sea, she was carried far from
shore by a dangerous riptide, and was saved only by the miraculous
appearance of a rope that allowed her to be pulled to safety.

Readers will learn much about India through Fraser’s technicolor
descriptions of a wedding in Delhi, burning pyres on the River Ganges,
and birds and fauna inhabiting the Periyar Wildlife Reserve. But the
book is mainly a spiritual travelogue and focuses on the country’s
mystical worlds of yoga and meditation. Indeed, in the book’s opening
sentence, Fraser points out that the purpose of her trip was to
“spiritually transform” herself. Her voyage starts in Rishikesh (the
yoga capital of the world), continues at the Golden Temple at Amritsar
in the northern state of Punjab (the centre of Sikhism), and winds down
with a 10-day visit to a Buddhist retreat where she meditates for 11
hours a day while observing a strict vow of silence.

For those uninitiated in Eastern philosophy and religion, Fraser
clearly explains the tenets of Buddhism, the importance of karma, and
the meaning of chakras. She also includes a helpful glossary and
bibliography for those interested in further reading.